Dealing with iPhone battery drain

Dear Eric: What about those new iPhone batteries? I got my iPhone Nov. 1. I was a holdout till my BlackBerry contract expired. I never bonded with the BlackBerry like my friends did, and couldn't wait to get rid of it and get the newer iPhone.

Well, 21/2 months later, the battery doesn't last me the whole day like it did in the beginning.

Owners of the iPhone 4S — the newest model that simplifies your life by, among other things, responding to your voice commands — have been griping about battery life since day one. The short answer: Wait till Apple tries another fix.

Apple tried to correct the problem with a software update in November, but it acknowledges more needs to be done, telling the website All Things D (http://www.allthingsd.com), "The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices. We continue to investigate a few remaining issues."

Even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a victim, as he recently told Dan Lyons of the Daily Beast: "With the iPhone, something happened with the new OS or the new phone, and it just started running through the battery so fast. I've had a lot of issues with things I have to turn off just to save the battery life."

Woz still loves his iPhone; he just wishes it were better. Like the rest of us.

Like Apple, Verizon Wireless offers tips for extending battery life:

— Avoid exposing the iPhone to extreme heat and cold.

— For the first three charge cycles, fully charge the battery overnight and allow it to fully discharge before recharging (aka battery conditioning).

— Charge and recondition a battery after an extended idle period.

— A lithium-ion battery may be damaged by extensive overcharging (continuously on a charger for more than 24 hours).

— Use the battery. If possible, avoid letting your battery sit idle for long periods of time.

— Use only the phone options and accessories that you really need.

None of those worked for me — or for a lot of people.

The battery life of my iPhone 4S was great at first, but after about two weeks, its 100 percent battery charge started dropping up to 5 percentage points an hour — even when it was doing nothing. By the end of the day, I was rushing my phone to its charger.

I've tried everything: reinstalling the operating system and the apps, turning off the automatic sending of my phone's diagnostic and usage data (Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage), turning off reception of Wi-Fi, cellular data, location services, frequent fetching of new email messages, you name it. I even rested the iPhone vertically instead of laying it flat when I wasn't using it.

At the end of the day, I wound up with a beautiful new apps machine and media player — because I'd turned off all the cool functions to prolong the battery.

So, like other frustrated iPhone 4S owners, I've turned all the features back on and decided to live with it. I like the phone but hate fretting over battery life while listening to music, watching videos, checking the Web — you know, doing all the things I got my iPhone to do.

Next time, we should wait till the reviews are in before our credit cards come out.

Do you have a tech question? Send a note to Eric Gwinn at egwinn@tribune.com. Be sure to include your name, location and a way to reach you if we need more information—and your question, of course.

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